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• December 2012 OTN Member Offers

  - by Cassandra Clark - OTN

  Our partners have answered the special offer call just in time for you to either shop for the tech professional in your life or share the list below with someone who keeps asking you what you want for the holidays.  Go right to the Oracle Technology Network Member Discount Page or read on for more details. Oracle  Store has extended their 10% Savings through December 31st 2012.Oracle Press - Oracle Technology Network members get 40% off the latest Oracle Press book by Oracle ACE Directors Ben Prusinski and Gustavo Gonzalez, Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Handbook, Third Edition in print and ebook format. CRC Press - Has added 3 NEW titles!  Get 20% off the below title at checkout. Secure Java: For Web Application Development Open Source Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Developing Essbase Applications: Advanced Techniques for Finance and IT Professional Oracle Embedded Programming and Application Development Packt Publishing - Get 25% off the print books and get 35% off the eBooks listed below. You will need to be logged in for the discounts to apply at checkout and codes expire December 31st 2012. Getting Started with Oracle Data Integrator 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial Oracle Certified Associate, Java SE 7 Programmer Study Guide Safari Online-  Give the Gift of Knowledge This Holiday SeasonGive your friends and colleagues the gift of Safari Books Online! With an ever-expanding library of books and videos from more than 100 publishers (including Oracle Press), a subscription to Safari Books Online is the gift that always fits, helping your friends learn new skills and stay current. Starting at $42.99, gift subscriptions are available for 1, 3, 6 and 12 months. Get all of this and more at the Oracle Technology Network Member Discount Page!

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• Tech Article: Tired of Null Pointer Exceptions? Use Java SE 8's Optional!

  - by Tori Wieldt

  A wise man once said you are not a real Java programmer until you've dealt with a null pointer exception. The null reference is the source of many problems because it is often used to denote the absence of a value. Java SE 8 introduces a new class called java.util.Optional that can alleviate some of these problems. In the tech article "Tired of Null Pointer Exceptions? Use Java SE 8's Optional!" Java expert Raoul-Gabriel Urma shows you how to make your code more readable and protect it against null pointer exceptions. Urma explains "The purpose of Optional is not to replace every single null reference in your codebase but rather to help design better APIs in which—just by reading the signature of a method—users can tell whether to expect an optional value. In addition, Optional forces you to actively unwrap an Optional to deal with the absence of a value; as a result, you protect your code against unintended null pointer exceptions." Learn how to go from writing painful nested null checks to writing declarative code that is composable, readable, and better protected from null pointer exceptions. Read "Tired of Null Pointer Exceptions? Use Java SE 8's Optional!"

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• How can I make myself better at programming working at a shi* job ?

  - by Scrooge

  I recently graduated with an Engineering degree in Computer Science, but my employer (a mid-sized software company) is not using my logical and programming skills. I want to move to a better opportunity but how do I do that since my experience here is not going to count as much? How do I get a better programming job? The worst part is that I am still reading from books (and not writing code myself) even after I have started working. They are paying me a standard entry level Indian IT job rate but I really dont care. It's not worth it. Please advise as to how I can do something worthwhile. (I have studied C++; Core Java; Ruby On Rails ..made a couple of academic projects but no relevant practical real world experience). Just to make things easier .. let me list a few basic queries How I get better at programming without a good project at my company? Please suggest projects where I can learn to write practical code (platform doesn't matter) Best place to take part in open source development? Is it possible that I earn slightly more while I learn? (apart from my sh** job I mean) What kind of practical projects are best suited for me? (ie for an entry level programmer)

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• I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now?

  - by kmote

  I hope this isn't too general of a question; I could really use some seasoned advice. I am newly employed as the sole "SW Engineer" in a fairly small shop of scientists who have spent the last 10-20 years cobbling together a vast code base. (It was written in a virtually obsolete language: G2 -- think Pascal with graphics). The program itself is a physical model of a complex chemical processing plant; the team that wrote it have incredibly deep domain knowledge but little or no formal training in programming fundamentals. They've recently learned some hard lessons about the consequences of non-existant configuration management. Their maintenance efforts are also greatly hampered by the vast accumulation of undocumented "sludge" in the code itself. I will spare you the "politics" of the situation (there's always politics!), but suffice to say, there is not a consensus of opinion about what is needed for the path ahead. They have asked me to begin presenting to the team some of the principles of modern software development. They want me to introduce some of the industry-standard practices and strategies regarding coding conventions, lifecycle management, high-level design patterns, and source control. Frankly, it's a fairly daunting task and I'm not sure where to begin. Initially, I'm inclined to tutor them in some of the central concepts of The Pragmatic Programmer, or Fowler's Refactoring ("Code Smells", etc). I also hope to introduce a number of Agile methodologies. But ultimately, to be effective, I think I'm going to need to hone in on 5-7 core fundamentals; in other words, what are the most important principles or practices that they can realistically start implementing that will give them the most "bang for the buck". So that's my question: What would you include in your list of the most effective strategies to help straighten out the spaghetti (and prevent it in the future)?

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• How to procedurally (create) grow an artistic (2D) tree in real-time (L-System?).

  - by lalan

  Recently I programmed an L-system module, It got me interested further. I am a Plants vs Zombies junkie as well, really liked the concept of Tree of Wisdom. Would love to create similar procedural art just for fun and learn more. Question: How should I approach the process of creating an artistic tree (2d perhaps with fixed camera/perspective) dynamically? Ideally I would like to start with a plant (only a stem with a leaf) and grow it dynamically using some influence (input/user action) over its structure. These influences may result in different type of branching, curves in branches, its spread, location of fruits, color of flowers, etc. Want it to be really full of life/spirit. :) Plants vs Zombies: Tree of wisdom It would be great to dynamically grow a similar tree, but with lot more variation and animations happening. My Background: Student / Programmer, have used few game engines (Ogre3d, cocos2d, unity). Haven't really programmed directly using openGL, trying to fix that :). I am ready to spend considerable time, Please let me know about the APIs? and how would an expert like you would take on this problem? Why 2D? I think it's easier to solve the problem only considering 2 dimensions. Artistic inspirations: Only the tree, with fruits and leaves, without the shrubs at the bottom The large tree (visible branches, green leaves, flowers, fruits, etc) on the left, behind monkey. PixelJunk's Eden (Art style inspiration). Procedurally Generated Apple Tree using Fractals Please let me know if it was easy for you to understand the question, I may elaborate further. I hope a discussion of various approach would be helpful for everyone. You guys are awesome.

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• Am I an idealist?

  - by ereOn

  This is not only a question, this is also a call for help. Since I started my career as a programmer, I always tried to learn from my mistakes. I worked hard to learn best-practices and while I don't consider myself a C++ expert, I still believe I'm not a beginner either. I was recently hired into a company for C++ development. There I was told that my way to work was "against the rules" and that I would have to change my mind. Here are the topics I disagree with my hierarchy (their words): "You should not use separate header files for your different classes. One big header file is both easier to read and faster to compile." "Trying to use different headers is counter-productive : use the same super-set of headers everywhere, and enforce the use #pragma hdrstop to hasten compilation" "You may not use Boost or any other library that uses nested directories to organize its files. Our build-machine doesn't work with nested directories. Moreover, you don't need Boost to create great software." One might think I'm somehow exaggerated things, but the sad truth is that I didn't. That's their actual words. I believe that having separate files enhance maintainability and code-correctness and can fasten compilation time by the use of the proper includes. Have you been in a similar situation? What should I do? I feel like it's actually impossible for me to work that way and day after day, my frustration grows.

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• Flash Player for IPTV

  - by Le Mystique

  Hi All, We have to design a flash player for three video sources of IPTV. Educational videos on the system that can be played on demand. (VOD or Video on Demand local) Streaming videos available on different websites that can be played on demand (VOD or Video on Demand remote) IPTV live streaming video feed Videos from three sources have to be played within single flash player that we need to design. There are 2 basic requirements: For the two VOD types, we have to provide the pause and play functionality. For IPTV, pause and play is not required, However, channel switching time is critically important here. The user should get the program behaviour as close to TV experience as possible. This means channel switching should be fast. To provide this, buffering of video is required for multiple channels. Now the questions is, is this possible? If yes, how? Secondly, what skill set (e.g. action script 3.0 , flash 10) should the flash programmer have to be able to design this? Thirdly is it as simple as making a normal FLV player? Or is it a more complex job?

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• How to cut the line between quality and time?

  - by m3th0dman

  On one hand, I have been taught by various software engineering books ([1] as example) that my job as a programmer is to make the best possible software: great design, flexibility, to be easily maintained etc. One the other hand although I realize that I actually write software for money and not for entertainment, although is very nice to write good code and plan ahead and refactor after writing and ... I wonder if it is always best for the business (after all we should be responsible). Is the business always benefiting from a best code? Maybe I'm over-engineering something, and it's not always useful? So how should I know when to stop in the process to achieving the best possible code? I am sure that experience is something that makes a difference here, but I believe this cannot be the only answer. [1] Uncle Bob's in Clean Code says at page 6 about the fact that: They [managers] may defend the schedule and requirements with passion; but that’s their job. It’s your job to defend the code with equal passion.

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• Developing wheel reinventing tendencies into a skill as opposed to reluctantly learning wheel-finding skills? [duplicate]

  - by Korey Hinton

  This question already has an answer here: Is reinventing the wheel really all that bad? 20 answers I am more of a high-level wheel reinventor. I definitely prefer to make use of existing API features built into a language and popular third-party frameworks that I know can solve the problem, however when I have a particular problem that I feel capable of solving within a reasonable time I am very reluctant to find someone else's solution. Here are a few reasons why I reinvent: It takes time to learn a new API API restrictions might exist that I don't know about Avoiding re-work of unfamiliar code I am conflicted between doing what I know and shifting to a new technique I don't feel comfortable with. On one hand I feel like following my instincts and getting really good at solving problems, especially ones that I would never challenge myself with if all I did was try to find answers. And on the other hand I feel like I might be missing out on important skills like saving time by finding the right framework and expanding my knowledge by learning how to use a new framework. I guess my question comes down to this: My current attitude is to stick to the built-in API and APIs I know well* and to not spend my time searching github for a solution to a problem I know I can solve myself within a reasonable amount of time. Is that a reasonable balance for a successful programmer? *Obviously I will still look around for new frameworks that save time and solve/simplify difficult problems.

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• Do Great Work

  - by user12601034

  Have you ever attended an online conference and actually had a desire to attend all of it?? Yesterday I attended the first day of the Great Work MBA program, sponsored by Box of Crayons and hosted by Michael Bungay Stanier. The topic of the day was “Grounding Yourself,” and the day featured five speakers on five different topics. I have to admit that I started the first session with kind of a “blech” feeling that I didn’t really want to participate, but for some reason I did. So I listened to the first session, and I was hooked. I ended up listening to all of the sessions for the day, and I had some great take-aways from the sessions – my highlights included: The opposite of bravery isn’t fear, it’s settling. In essence, you need to be brave in order to accomplish anything. If you’re settling, you’re not being brave, and your accomplishments will likely be lackluster. Bravery requires confidence and permission. You need to work at being brave by taking small wins, build them up and then take slightly larger risks. Additionally, you need to “claim your own crown.” Nobody in the business world is going to give you permission to be a guru in X – you need to give yourself permission to become a guru in X and then do it. Fall in love with obstacles. Everyone is going to face some form of failure. One way to deal with this is to fall in love with solving the puzzle of obstacles. You don’t have to hit it if you can go around it. Understanding purpose brings out the best in people and the best people. As a leader, drawing in people who are passionate and highly motivated about their work creates velocity for your organization. Being clear about purpose is the first step in doing this. You must own your own story. Everything about you creates a “unique you” that is distinct from everyone else. As you take ownership of this, it becomes part of your strength. It’s not a strength if you’re running away from it. Focus on what’s right. Be aware of your tendency to interpret a situation a certain way and differentiate between helpful and unhelpful interpretations. Three questions for how to think differently: 1) Why? 2) Who says so? 3) What would happen if? These three questions can help you build alternative perspectives and options that can increase resiliency. Even though this first day was focused on “Grounding Yourself,” I see plenty of application in the corporate environment for both individuals and leaders of teams. To apply these highlights to my work environment, I would do the following: Understand the purpose – of my company, of my team and of my role on the team. If I know the purpose, I know what I need to bring to the table to make me, my team and my company successful. Declare your goals…your BEHAGS (big, hairy, audacious goals).Have the confidence to declare what you and/or your team is going to accomplish.Sure, you might have to re-state those goals down the line, but you can learn from that as well. Get creative about achieving your goals.Break down your obstacles by asking yourself what is going to stop you from achieving your goals and then, for each obstacles, ask those three questions:Why?Who says so? What would happen if? Focus on what’s right.I had a manager who asked us to write status reports every week.“Status” consisted of 1) What did I accomplish; 2) What will I accomplish next week; 3) How can my manager help me.The focus on our status report was always “what’s right”(“what’s wrong” was always a conversation at the point in time it was needed). I’m normally a skeptic of online webcasts/conferences, and I normally expect to take away maybe one or two ideas. I’m really glad, however, that I took the time to listen to all of the sessions yesterday, and I hope that my take-aways inspire you to think about how you might do great work also. --

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• As a developer, how do I learn sales? [closed]

  - by Dan Abramov

  I quit the company I was working for to pursuit an opportunity as a startup, and I believe in our product. I'm sure it's going to be great if we attract some customers first to keep going. (I don't want funding.) Our product is targeted at private schools and courses, and helps organize the mess other LMSs introduce. The problem is, our team is basically just me and I have very little idea about sales and marketing. I can do reasonably good copywriting but I'm sure I can do better—and being nervous or too techy in a real world conversation with the client doesn't help. I want to get better, in fact, a lot better at negotiating with clients and pitching my product. I did look for some “sales articles” on the web, and a lot of what I found is plain bullshit on SEO-engineered websites promoting books or $5000 courses. What I need instead is a developer's perspective on how to sale a product you think is great. What are typical programmer's mistakes and misconceptions about sales, and how to avoid them? How do you evolve into a reasonably great salesman? I can't believe it's in the mindset and unlearnable. Your own experience, combined with great articles available on the web is most welcome. To Future Readers The question got closed because it is not a good fit for this site. I found some helpful tips in a similar question asked on a sister StackExchange site about startups: I'm a terrible salesperson. What can I do about it?

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• Storing data offline with javascript

  - by Walker

  My question is about storing data offline and potentially whether I will need to bring in an outside programmer or could this be learned within a few weeks? The website I am working on will have an interface where users will login and go through a series of quizzes in the form of checkbox, drop down menus, and others. Each page/quiz area could have 20-100 total checkboxes in a series of 3-5 rows because of the comprehensive nature of course. This I can do - I know how to code the quiz and return a correct or incorrect answer based on each individual checkbox and present a cumulative score (ie: you got 57% correct). The issue lies in the fact that I would like to save the users results and keep them informed of their progress. When they complete all of the quizzes, I would like to have a visual output of their performance in each area. Storing the output from their results offline is where I think I may run into a problem with my lack of coding experience. I would also like to have a sidebar with their progress of each section (10-15) with a green percentage completion bar or a % correct which would draw from this. I have never had to code something that stores information like this offline - so back to my question - would it be better to learn the language needed or bring in a coder/developer for the back end stuff.

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• Dynamic model interactions

  - by Richard

  I am just curious as to how in many games (namely games like arkham asylum/city, manhunt, hitman) do they make it so that your character can "grab" a character in front of you and do stuff to them. I know this may sound very confusing but for an example go to youtube and search "hitman executions", and the first video is an example of what i'm asking. Basically I'm wondering how they make your model dynamically interact with whatever other model you come across, so in hitman when you come up behind some one with the fibre wire you strangle the other character or if you have the anesthetic you come up behind some person and put your hand over there mouth while they struggle and slowly go to the floor where you lay them down. I am confused as to whether it was animated to use two models using specific bone/skeletal identifiers, if it is just two completely separate animations that are played at the correct time to make it look like they are actually interacting or something else all together. I am not an animator so i assume most of what i just said is not right but i hope that some one can understand what i mean and provide an answer. PS) I am a programmer and I am in the process of building a hitmanesque game, just because i love that style of game and I want to increase my skills on something fun, so if you do know what i'm talking about have some examples with involving both models and programming (i use c++ and mainly Ogre3D at the moment but i am getting into unity and XNA) i would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

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• General List of Common Programming Errors

  - by javamonkey79

  As one journey's from apprentice to journeyman to master I've noticed that one accumulates a list of best practices for things they've been bitten by. Personally, I write most of my stuff in java & SQL so my list tends to be slated towards them. I've accumulated the following: When doing list removal, always reverse iterate Avoid adding items to a list you are currently iterating on Watch out for NullPointerExceptions Now, I know there are language specific "common errors" links out there like this one. And I'm also aware of the pragmatic programmer tips, Martin Fowler's "code smells". Does anyone know of any good lists out there of things like I've listed above (re: list removal, adding items, etc). My guess is that there are some good QA folks out there that can probably throw me a bone here. I'm not looking for things the compiler can catch - I'm looking for common things that cause bugs. In the event that there isn't a list out there already then I welcome posting your own findings here. Thanks in advance!

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• Do you keep your ideas secret? and why?

  - by MainMa

  I believe any programmer has several ideas that she/he considers as innovative or at least valuable. It may be an idea of a new product which will make this world better or a new development approach, etc. But a great idea must be implemented and promoted/advertised. This requires a lot of work (proofs of concept, prototypes, technology previews, etc.) and a lot of money (appropriate advertisement, marketing, etc.). So months later, the idea stays in our heads, but nothing else is done, because it's difficult, long and expensive, sometimes even impossible for a single developer. On the other hand, it would be painful to share our ideas, and see a medium-size company which has enough resources making something useful from it and having success and money. So what do you do with your ideas you can hardly implement or patent? Do you talk freely about them in discussion boards and with other developers? Do you keep them like a precious thing without never talking about them to anybody? If you keep your ideas, why are you doing so? Is it just because you hope that one day, you will be able to implement them and have a huge success, while you know very well by experience that it's an utopia?

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• How to add a new developer to the team

  - by lortabac

  I run a small company composed of only 2 developers. For one of our clients we are building a very big application, whose development has gone on for 1.5 years. Now this client has found an important sponsorship, and they are organizing some events related to this project, so we have a deadline in 2 months and we can't miss it. We are thinking of adding a new developer to the team, and I am wondering what we can do to help his integration. This is the situation: We are approaching the threshhold of Brooks's law, the point when adding new developers will be counter-productive. The application is relatively well designed, but the implementation is chaotic in some points (especially older code). There are unit tests only for more recent code. When this project started, we didn't have the habit of doing tests. Documentation and comments are incomplete. The application is both large and complex. The client has written down almost every detail about his project, in a very clear and "programmer-friendly" way. Is it a good idea to add a person now? If so, what can we do in order to help the new developer integrate into the team?

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• Views : ViewControllers, many to one, or one to one?

  - by conor

  I have developed an Android application where, typically, each view (layout.xml) displayed on the screen has it's own corresponding fragment (for the purpose of this question I may refer to this as a ViewController). These views and Fragments/ViewControllers are appropriately named to reflect what they display. So this has the effect of allowing the programmer to easily pinpoint the files associated with what they see on any given screen. The above refers to the one to one part of my question. Please note that with the above there are a few exceptions where very similar is displayed on two views so the ViewController is used for two views. (Using a simple switch (type) to determine what layout.xml file to load) On the flip side. I am currently working on the iOS version of the same app, which I didn't develop. It seems that they are adopting more of a one-to-many (ViewController:View) approach. There appears to be one ViewController that handles the display logic for many different types of views. In the ViewController are an assortment of boolean flags and arrays of data (to be displayed) that are used to determine what view to load and how to display it. This seems very cumbersome to me and coupled with no comments/ambiguous variable names I am finding it very difficult to implement changes into the project. What do you guys think of the two approaches? Which one would you prefer? I'm really considering putting in some extra time at work to refactor the iOS into a more 1:1 oriented approach. My reasoning for 1:1 over M:1 is that of modularity and legibility. After all, don't some people measure the quality of code based on how easy it is for another developer to pick up the reigns or how easy it is to pull a piece of code and use it somewhere else?

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• Windows Physical Direct Memory Mapping

  - by chrisjleaf

  I'm a bit disappointed there is almost no discussion of this no matter where I look so I guess I'll have to ask. I'm writing a cross platform memory bench marking application which requires direct physical address mapping rather than virtual addressing. EDIT The solution would look something like the Linux/Unix system calls: int fd = open("/dev/mem", O_RDONLY); mmap(NULL, len, PROT_READ, MAP_SHARED, fd, PHYSICAL_ADDRESS_OFFSET); which will require the kernel to either give you a virtual page mapping to the desired physical address or return that it failed. This does require supervisor privileges but that is ok. I have seen a lot of information about shared memory and memory mapped files but all of these reside on disc and are thus not really useful when I'm trying to make a system dependent read. It is very similar to writing an IO driver although I do no need write permissions to the physical address. This site gives an example of how to do it on a driver level using the Windows Driver Kit: NT Insider: Sharing Memory between drivers and applications This solution would probably require Visual Studio which currently I do not have access to. (I have downloaded the WDK api but it complained about my use of GCC for Windows). I'm traditionally a Linux programmer so I'm hoping there might be something really simple I'm missing. Thanks in advance if you know something I don't!

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• Advanced PHP book [closed]

  - by Aaditi Sharma

  I've gone and stumbled across a lot of recommendations for PHP books, including on SO, however could not find a reasonable & convincible answer for this. Is there a really good advanced book for PHP. Background: I've done almost 8 months in PHP. I know the basics. I go through php.net very often. I've played around with Codeigniter, amongst other frameworks. I've been doing JavaScript for almost 2 years, and specifically thank Douglas Crockford for this, I completely changed the way I code JavaScript. I spend a lot of time travelling, and would love to read a book about PHP, that includes the awesome parts and even when something doesn't quite work in PHP. (As a note a lot of previous answers on SO and programmers give varied results.) I have to place an order through a library which has it's limitations. One book that some of experienced PHP programmers could recommend would be helpful. I have gone through http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books, which do NOT have books related to PHP.

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• How to manage Areas/Levels in an RPG?

  - by Hexlan

  I'm working on an RPG and I'm trying to figure out how to manage the different levels/areas in the game. Currently I create a new state (source file) for every area, defining its unique aspects. My concern is that as the game grows the number of class files will become unmanageable with all the towns, houses, shops, dungeons, etc. that I need to keep track of. I would also prefer to separate my levels from the source code because non-programmer members of the team will be creating levels, and I would like the engine to be as free from game specific code as possible. I'm thinking of creating a class that provides all the functions that will be the same between all the levels/areas with a unique member variable that can be used to look up level specifics from data. This way I only need to define level/area once in the code, but can create multiple instances each with its own unique aspects provided by data. Is this a good way to go about solving the issue? Is there a better way to handle a growing number of levels?

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• How do Unity 12.04/Compiz bindings really work?

  - by Daniel

  There is a bewildering array of places to set bindings, all inconsistent with one another. E.g. in Unity's System Settings having the Ctrl-key highlight the mouse position is an on/off choice. I like the feature, but not on such a prominent key where I keep activating it accidentally. The keyboard shortcuts allow only one binding per command, where I might like a convenient one on the external keyboard and an emergency alternative for when I'm on the road. Keyboard custom shortcuts has a nice interface, but allows only key bindings — besides it doesn't seem to work for me. So I activated CCSM Commands. There I have the choice of key-, mouse- and/or edge bindings. Whereas some places in CCSM offers only one or two of these binding possibilities, randomly at the whim of the programmer. I have not found a way to differentiate a mouse-drag from a click. E.g. I want <SuperMouse1-drag anywhere on a window to move it, while if I don't drag, it should be raise-lower. On the title bar I want the same without needing the <Super key. Now I find raise-lower only in System Settings where I can't assign a mouse binding. If therefore in CCSM I fallback to only lower and put move on the same binding, the window already gets lowered on mouse down, and I can then invisibly move it. Very useful! I have <Altasciicircum get in the way of an Emacs binding, with some to me useless popup overlay. I can find it nowhere, so I can't turn it off. So how can I go without these frontends until they have matured, and instruct Compiz directly, for example in the way Emacs or Sawfish have keymaps, and separate ones for each context, with inheritance?

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• Reaching Intermediate Programming Status

  - by George Stocker

  I am a software engineer that's had positions programming in VBA (though I dare not consider that 'real' experience, as it was trial and error!), Perl w/ CGI, C#, and ASP.NET. The latter two are post-undergraduate, with my entrance into the 'real world'. I'm 2 years out of college, and have had 5 years of experience (total) across the languages I've mentioned. However, when it comes to my resume, I can only put 2 years down for C#, and less than a year down for ASP.NET. I feel like I know C#, but I still have to spend time going 'What does this method do?', whereas some of the more senior level engineers can immediately say, "Oh, Method X does this, without ever having looked at that method before." So I know empirically that there's a gulf there, but I'm not exactly sure how to bridge it. I've started programming in Project Euler, and I picked up a book on design patterns, but I still feel like I spend each day treading water, instead of moving forward. That isn't to say that I don't feel like I've made progress, it just means that as far as I come each day, I still see the mountain top way off in the distance. My question is this: How did you overcome this plateau? How long did it take you? What methods can you suggest to assist me in this? I've read through Code Complete, The Mythical Man Month, and CLR via C#, 2nd edition -- my question is: What do I do now? Edit: I just found this question on projects for an intermediate level programmer. I think it adds to the discussion (though it does not supplant my question). As such, I'm adding it to the question as a "For More Information".

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• Is it possible to procure venture capital based on in-progress ideas? [migrated]

  - by Clay Shannon

  I hope this is not the wrong forum for this question, but I can't find one in the Stack Exchange "family" that would be more appropriate. I have ideas for two web sites which I think will be quite popular (they are totally unrelated to each other). I am a programmer, and a "creative" (photographer, author, musician). So I have the "vision" as well as the technical know-how to bring these websites into being. My "problem" is that I'm champing at the bit to complete them, and don't have much time to work on them (being employed fulltime, etc.) If I continue to work on them in my so-called spare time, it will probably be a year or more before they are both done. If I was in a position to work on them fulltime (IOW, if I had a "silent partner" willing to invest enough money that I could quit my job), I could have them complete in about three months. I would be willing to partner with somebody or some group who would back me financially in this way. My vision/work combined with their monetary investment could bring about "great things" or at least moderately great things. I know you can "crowd fund" startups and so on, but for that you need to expose your idea. My ideas are not something I would want to make public, as somebody might "steal" them. I'm willing to discuss them with serious individual potential investors, though (provided they were willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement). Does anybody have any recommendation on how I might find a suitable partner[s] for this/these ventures?

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• Make the Time

  - by WonderOfItAll

  Took the little one to the pool tonight for swim lessons. Okay, Okay. They're not really lessons so much as they are "Hey, here's a few bucks, let me rent out a small section of your pool to swim around with my little one" Saw a dad at the pool. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, and two year old somewhere around there. Saw a mom at the pool. Arguing with her five year old to NOT take a shower after swimming. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, work laptop open on stadium seats. Her reasoning for not wanting the child to shower "Look, I have to get this stuff to the office by 6:30, we don't have time for you to shower. Let's go" Wait, isn't the whole point of this little experience called Mommy and Me (or, as in my case, Daddy and Me). Wherein Mommy/Daddy is supposed to spend time with little one. Not with the Bluetooth. Not with the work laptop. Dad (yeah, the same dad from earlier), in the pool. Bluetooth off (it's not waterproof or I'm sure he would've had it on), two year old in hand and iPad somewhere put away. Getting frustrated with kid because he won't 'perform' on command. Here's a little exchange Kid: "I don't wanna get in the water" Dad: "Well, we're here for 30 minutes, get in the water" Kid: "No, don't wanna" Dad: "Fine, I'm getting in" and, true to his word, in he goes, off to swim. Kid: Crying Dad: "Well, c'mon" Kid: Walking to stands Dad: Ignoring kid Kid: At stands Dad: Out of pool, drying off. Frustrated. Grabs bag, grabs kid, leaves How sad. It really seems like I am living in a generation of parents who view their children as one big scheduled distraction to another. It's almost like the dad was saying "Look, little 2 year old boy, I have a busy scheduled. Right now my Outlook Calendar tells me that I have 30 mins to spend with you, so, let's go kid: PERFORM because I have the time" Really? Can someone please tell me when the hell this happened? When did spending time with your kid, spending time with your family, spending time with your spouse, etc... become a distraction? I've seen people at work all day Tweeting throughout the day, checked in with Four Square, IM up and running constantly so they can 'stay in touch' only to see these same folks come home and be irritated because their kids or their spouse wants to connect with the. I've seen these very same people leave the house, go to the corner bar/store/you-name-the-place to be 'alone' only to find them there, plugged in, tweeting away, etc, etc, etc I LOVE technology. I love working with technology. But I also know that I am a human being. A person who, by very definition, is a social being. I needed social interactions and contact--and, no, I'm not talking about the Social Graph kind of connections, I'm talking about those interactions which, *GASP* involve eye to eye contact and human contact. A recent study found that the number one complaint of kids is that they feel they have to compete with technology for their parents time and attention. The number one wish from high school kids? That there parents would turn off the computer/tv/cell phone at dinner. This, coming from high school kids. Shouldn't that tell you a whole helluva lot? So, do yourself a favor tomorrow. Plug into technology all day. Throw yourself into it. Be passionate about what you do. When you walk through the door to your family, turn it all off for 30 mins and be there with your loved ones. If you can manage to play Angry Birds, I'm sure you can handle being disconnected for 30 minutes. Make the time

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• What are some good resources for creating a game engine in XNA?

  - by Glasser

  I'm currently a student game programmer working on an indie project. We have a team of eleven people (five programmers, four artists, and two audio designers) aboard, all working hard to help design this game. We've been meeting for months now and so far we have a pretty buffed out Game Design Document as well as much audio/visual concept art. Our programmers are itching to progress on our own end. Each person in our programming team is well versed in C++, but is very familiar with C#. We have enough experience and skill that we're confident that we will be successful with our game, and we're looking to build our own game engine in XNA as it seems like it would be worth our time and effort in the end. The game itself will be a 2D beat 'em up style game to be released over xbox live and the PC. It's play style will be similar to that of Castle Crashers or Scott Pilgrim vs The World. We want to design the game engine to allow us to better implement our assets into the game as well as to simplify the creation of design elements/mechanics. Currently between our programmers, we have books such as "XNA 4.0" and "Game Coding Complete, Third Edition," but we'd still like more information on both XNA and (especially) building a game engine from scratch. What are any other good books, websites, or resources we could use to further map out and program our game engine?

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